


We Both Kinda Liked It

by elizajane



Series: Panty 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel goes clothes shopping, Dean is doing all right, Episode Related, Episode: s05e04 The End, Established Relationship, F/M, Gender Policing, John Winchester is an asshole, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:14:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You’re twenty-nine</i>. He reminds himself. <i>And Dad’s not here to shout or throw things or give you the fucking silent treatment</i>. And the only other people in the hotel room are his boyfriend-the-fallen-angel and his brother the gayest straight boy that ever lived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/gifts), [Minerva_Holmes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minerva_Holmes/gifts).



> I've had this one sitting in my drafts for awhile, judging me, with everyone too busy to beta ... so I'm letting it out in public without a second pair of eyes. Anything unsuccessful is therefore entirely my fault. 
> 
> It was [Crowgirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crowgirl) who observed how below-the-radar the Rhonda Hurley scene from “The End” has flown, to which I responded, “Because it could totally be this adorable fic in which Cas wouldn’t see what was embarrassing about that.” … At which point she looked at me and said, “It’s all yours.”
> 
> This is my first attempt at Dean/Cas. I picture it taking place at some point during/after Season 5. It's only loosely canon-compliant.
> 
> In my headcanon (and this story), Dean and Cas are an established couple and John Winchester was a controlling asshole. You have been warned.
> 
> It turned out to be a panty fic that's only marginally about the panties. You'll see what I mean.

**I.**

Dean blinks down at the black satin panties folded innocently on top of the stack of clean clothes Cas has left neatly on the toilet seat while Dean was busy cleaning the last of the midnight-black, stubbornly-adherent selkie blood (fuck, that stuff burned) from underneath his fingernails.

 _What the -- ?_ Dean feels his brain stutter to a halt. A rivulet of water from his damp hair trails down between his eyebrows and along the side of his nose; he’s forgotten what to do with his hands mid-motion, movement arrested as he was lifting the thin hotel towel up to scrub his hair dry.

He notes, distantly, that his hands are shaking.

Though that could be a delayed adrenaline reaction rather than – well. It’s been one of those days.

The way his stomach has knotted instantly and completely in panic, though, that’s probably less to do with delayed shock than the fact that _Cas bought him women’s underwear_.

He closes his eyes and deliberately expands his chest in hopes this will jump-start his lungs into breathing.

And tries not to freak the fuck out like every muscle in his body so desperately wants him to.

 _You’re twenty-nine._ He reminds himself. _And Dad’s not here to shout or throw things or give you the fucking silent treatment._ And the only other people in the hotel room are his boyfriend-the-fallen-angel and his brother the gayest straight boy that ever lived.

(“The term you're looking for is ‘metrosexual’ Dean,” he'd been told in Sam's best “I only left Stanford because I _wanted_ to and I could waltz back in anytime” voice. Dean had been forced to walk away from the subsequent discussion between Sam and Cas before he'd punched one or both of them in the face).

It’s still a struggle – with even odds for a moment or two -- not to black out. He feels light-headed and a little nauseated. This is so not what he needed after taking down a couple of rabid seals, having his last clean pair of jeans soaked in tar-like blood that it was immediately obvious would never, _ever_ come clean.

He should have known it was a bad idea to send Cas out on his own to buy Dean a replacement pair, but Cas had been the cleanest of the three of them and Sam needed his shoulder cleaned and bandaged. Dean had really wanted to get on that sooner rather than later, so he’d slapped a couple of credit cards into Cas’s palm and pointed the (former) angel in the direction of the Kohl’s across the highway.

“Dude -- it’s not that difficult. You’ve paid for shit, remember? The dinner we had at Denny’s on Monday? And when we went shopping for your jeans back in Ashtabula?” It’s part of Operation Enable Castiel, Angel of the Lord, to Pass For Human.

Some days they make more progress than others.

“I know how to pay for clothing, Dean,” Castiel tells him, slipping the plastic cards into the back pocket of his jeans in an obviously-conscious move. (He’s lately taken to mimicking the Winchester brothers’ physical movements, like a little kid trailing after his favorite uncles. It’s disturbing.)

Cas had returned twenty minutes later, while Dean was in the shower, and walked into the bathroom without bothering to knock. Three months ago, when Dean was still hiding behind a mask of indifference to the angel’s presence, he’d have reminded Cas about the personal space thing. But these days Cas is pretty much allowed into Dean’s personal space whenever he damn well pleases, however he pleases, so Dean hadn't wasted breath on a Miss Manners lesson.

“Thanks, Cas. Just leave ‘em on the toilet seat,” he’d called through the yellowing shower curtain, and as the angel moved to do just that Dean had gone back to rinsing the soap out of his hair without a second thought. Through the open door he'd heard Sam on the phone – probably ordering pizza or Chinese take-out. Otherwise Dean might have have suggested Cas join him under the warm spray.

He’s tired and not in the mood for anything energetic. But given their close quarters and Sam’s omnipresence, sometimes a shared shower is the only opportunity he has for the better part of a week to see and touch Cas naked. To run his hands uninterrupted from the nape of Cas’s neck to the crease where Cas’s ass meets the tight muscle along the back of his thigh.

“Sam says dinner will be here in fifteen minutes,” Cas had relayed, confirming Dean’s expectation regarding Sam’s priorities for the evening, and then he'd disappeared into the main room again, pulling the door gently shut behind him.

Dean fervently hopes his younger brother was too distracted by the prospect of food to notice what, exactly, Cas had purchased. Because he _so_ doesn't want Sam's asking why Cas went out to buy Levis and came back with Victoria's Secret knock-offs.

Not tonight – not _ever_ if he can help it.

Of _course_ Cas would know, Dean realizes, putting out a hand to touch the smooth, black fabric. It’s slightly cool to the touch, feels good between his fingers and thumb. Of course Cas knows. Because Cas knows everything about him. In that creepy-yet-comforting “I’ve been inside your head” way that Dean tries hard not to think about most of the time.

He tries, for example, not to think when they’re in bed together whether – when Cas is touching him in this way or that – if he's just _that good_ at reading Dean's body language or whether he knows what feels good to Dean because _he's seen Dean with other people_.

This is not something he's found the courage to ask Cas about yet.

But the panties? He has a feeling they might be an answer to that question. And he's _really_ not sure how he feels about that.

This thing with Cas is still new, terrifyingly fragile and spun from titanium at the same time. Dean knows -- _knows_ \-- that what they have together is permanent, is forever in an angel sort of way (never mind the impending apocalypse, never mind Cas’s on-again, off-again mortality). And the knowledge of that, which he carries deep in his bones -- along with the sigils Cas carved there; can feel Cas’s name twined ‘round his heart -- is about as fucking terrifying as it gets.

Because what do you _do_ with that, when you’re also sure you’re gonna fuck it up, somehow, get it _wrong_ , disappoint the person – angelic being – whatever – the _one person_ who knows you. Who's seen your soul and (miraculously) not found it wanting.

He looks down and realizes he’s fisted his hand in the panties without realizing it, knuckles a mottled white between the angry scrapes and bruises from his tumble on the gravel by the river (the second homicidal selkie hadn't given in easy).

He realizes Cas has cut out the tags, smoothed and folded the fabric. Thinks about how they've been left here, unannounced, a gift-giving in the time-honored Winchester style (read: don't get caught doing it).

He takes another deep breath, lets it out.

For a heartbeat Dean actually considers wearing the damn things. But that brings back the vertigo and he knows he just – _can't_. Not right then. So he drops the panties to one side. He slips into the crisp new jeans (Cas _had_ remembered his size, he notes, which probably bodes well -- God help him -- for the panties) _sans_ underwear, the denim feeling slightly scratchy but not altogether unpleasant between his thighs, and yanks the clean t-shirt Cas had unearthed for him over his head.

Tossing his towel into the damp pile in the corner of the bathroom, he bends over and picks up the underwear, shoving them into his pocket before sidling out of the bathroom with a, “Hey, did I hear the words 'pizza' and 'onion rings'? Did either of you losers think to grab some beer?”

Later that night, when Sam's fallen asleep during a re-run of _Megashark vs. Crocosaurus_ on the SyFy channel, Dean slides off the bed where he and Cas have been dozing on each others' shoulders, and slips the black silk into one of the inner pockets of his duffle. He looks up in the act of zipping the duffle closed and sees Cas watching him.

“Want the bathroom first dude?” He asks softly, “Or are you gonna crash without brushing your teeth?”

“Dean --” Cas begins, then sees the shuttered look on Dean's face and wisely changes course, “-- why don't you join me in the bathroom and we can prepare for bed -- together?”

As Cas's attempts at flirtation go, that's actually not half bad: at once tentative and leering. And Dean is really grateful Castiel has taken the hint and let the panties issue drop (for now), so he hauls Cas to his feet so they can spend ten minutes in the bathroom alternating teeth-brushing with groping and kissing. Which turns into a good half hour of the sort of reverent touching that Cas never seems to get enough of and Dean could _totally_ get hooked on – before realizing they've practically dozed off _again_ in each others' arms on the pea-green shag rug that smells faintly of toilet bowl cleaner.

“Bed, Cas,” Dean murmurs, putting a hand on Cas's roving fingers, holding him still, but not pulling away. He loves this about Cas, loves how unashamedly _tactile_ he is: hands and mouth on every inch of Dean's skin as if this, itself, is sex – is _better_ than sex – even when (like tonight) both of them are too exhausted to even _think_ about getting it up. “You got all night to hold me, remember?”

“Will you sleep without your shirt?” Cas asks, hopefully, and Dean huffs a laugh into Cas's collarbone.

“Sure, man. Sure. Whatever you'd like.”

Which is how he ends up on his back with Cas plastered to his side limpet-style, scrawny thigh a solid weight across Dean's pelvis, and Cas's arm like a vise across his chest, hand glued to Dean's upper arm where scar tissue tingles in response to the vestiges of Cas's grace.

Cas still doesn't sleep quite like a human, but when he crashes he crashes, and less than five minutes after they've settled under the covers he's no longer cognizant.

Dean, though, finds himself awake and staring at the patterns the lights from the parking lot leave on the stucco ceiling of their room, thinking about the panties hidden away in his bag, and the fact that the man wrapped heavy and slightly over-heated around him, had bought them – deliberately; Dean imagines Cas puzzling over the choices in the Intimate Apparel section and has to seal his lips against laughter – specifically for Dean. As a gift.


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

Here’s the thing.

Talk aside, Dean’s only gone what he’d classify as “all the way” with a handful of people this side of Hell. Flirting and groping and tongue sucking aside, he’s maybe had -- half a dozen partners? -- since he and Tim Wilson discovered the pleasure of reciprocal hand jobs in the Wilsons' basement during those six months the Winchesters had been in Toledo. Maybe the winter and spring of ‘95?

And he remembers them all -- some more charitably than others. Though only one whose face floats through his nightmares.

And -- aside from Cassie and Lisa, and now Castiel, whom he’s starting to believe he might never have the _chance_ to forget -- he remembers Rhonda Hurley with the greatest clarity. For all that they’d only really done it once. It’s been over a decade now, and he can still count on a memory of that afternoon ripping through him three, four, five times a year, with such force that it knocks the breath right out of him.

But no one else has ever, _ever_ known about Rhonda.

His memories of her feel _private_ , protected, maybe even -- sacred? He tries the word out in his head, holding Cas tight in his arms, letting his eyes track the dance of car headlights around the edges of the polyester drapes that hang heavy across the hotel windows. He’s guarded those memories fiercely because, even after John had found the panties, he’d never told his father where they’d come from -- or why he’d kept them.

Why he’d worn them. And why he’d missed them, fiercely, when they were gone.

It's one thing to know, in an abstract sort of way, that Castiel knows everything about Dean. It's another altogether to have tangible, physical proof burning a hole in Dean’s duffle bag that Cas does, in fact, have access to memories, experiences, that Dean had never shared with another soul -- living or dead.

Dean isn't sure whether he's weirded out by the fact Cas knows, or weirded out by the fact that it's _okay_ with him that Cas knows.

That, in fact, the first reaction he'd had to seeing the panties sitting on top of the new Levis that evening had been closer to relief than panic.

(Or maybe panicked relief? Was that even a thing?)

Lying there, in the dark, in the protective death-grip embrace of his very own angel, it feels safe to unpack those memories and spool them out, like the lights of passing cars flickering across the pasty stucco of the hotel room walls.

Dean and Rhonda had only ever been together, in the panty-sharing, carnal way, once.

On the afternoon of May 23rd, 1998, in Springfield, Missouri, to be exact.

It had been during a relatively stable period when John had let them stay in one place for the better part of a year before pulling up stakes and moving on. Not that John himself was there, most of the time, but he'd sent postcards (occasionally) and cash (even more infrequently). And Sam was getting good grades in school and Dean, with the help of Bobby and Ellen, was able to fake enough references to land a job at the Jiffy Lube across the highway. It was minimum wage to change other peoples' oil and up-sell filters, but at least he got to be around cars. So for once he and Sammy weren't living off pilfered pop tarts and Campbell's soup and Whopper combos at Burger King's (at least, not exclusively).

Rhonda Hurley was one of two women who worked at the Jiffy Lube, and the only one who actually gave a shit about the inner workings of an automobile. She was two years older than Dean, had worked her way up to shift manager while taking classes part-time at Missouri State, perfecting the art of talking back to obnoxious suburban fathers who thought they could push her around – without actually letting them see her do it.

She had this _look_ that she’d give them, just before smiling and doing exactly what it pleased her to do, that it took Dean exactly 47 days on the job to realize turned him on faster than anything had turned him on in his life.

Or maybe it was just that she knew her way around cars.

Or maybe it was her cackling laugh, her sweet, sweet smile, or the way the jewelry in her multiple piercings got a little flashier every time the douchebag from corporate came through to lecture them on company standards. Or the way every conversation eventually circled around to the latest episode of _Buffy_ (their pay-per-week motel had cable, okay?). Or the fact that she sometimes showed up at work with her six-year-old niece in tow because her sister had picked up a second shift at the hospital and there wasn't anyone else available to look after Gloria.

She wasn't the sort of girl (woman?) nineteen-year-old Dean thought _should_ catch his eye -- he hadn't figured out yet that “should” didn't really belong in the same room as desire. Nineteen-year-old Dean figured that he ought to be looking for a girl to complement the badass “don't take shit from no-one” persona he'd assiduously cultivated, back when he was still attempting the whole high school thing.

A badass, he'd figured back then, needed someone sassy to ride on the backseat of the bike or hang around watching him tune the Impala. Rhonda, he suspected, always rode at least shotgun, when not demanding the driver's seat, and was as likely as he was to end up with her head under the hood when there were a few hours going spare on a Sunday afternoon.

Rhonda was about six inches shorter than Dean and soft around the edges, her hair a mass of black curls under her Jiffy Lube cap, her skin pale with a scatter of acne across her cheekbones. She drank Dr. Pepper like an addict and had a fondness for Nature Valley granola bars, but only the ones in the green wrapper.

Not that Dean admitted to himself, at first, that he noticed these things.

But he did -- notice them, that is -- and what with one thing and another their easygoing friendship at work (he'd give Gloria a tour around the inside of a VW engine while Rhonda ran the dailies; she'd give him a ride up the road when the weather was bad) turned into an easygoing friendship after work. She'd come over to the hotel for all-day _Buffy_ marathons; he'd ride shotgun to her place after work so they could play _Resident Evil_. At some point they'd order pizza. If Sam was there, he'd sit in the corner with a pile of books and notes and exude disapproval. Dean would ignore his little brother and, taking her cues from Dean, Rhonda would occasionally toss Sam a bag of chips or slide over a piece of pizza and otherwise do the same.

She knew a little about John, knew Dean had spent most of his life looking after Sam, that his dad was a control-freak and not a little paranoid. She’d let him talk and handed over another can of Mountain Dew when it seemed indicated, and when he’d run out of frustrations she’d say, “I just found this copy of _Blade Runner_ at the Goodwill on Saturday -- wanna watch?”

She’d given Dean space just to _be_ and simply asked for friendship in return. Dean hadn’t run into a lot of people in his nineteen years who were so uncomplicated. So easy.

Dean tried not to think too hard about the way he watched her move when she did things like this: stretch across the teal Formica tabletop, settle herself into the sagging couch with a rocking of her hips, punch the air in triumph when she completed a level, turn to hide her head against his arm when there was vomiting on screen, reach up to give him a hug goodbye on her way out the door.

“Jeeze, Dean, you're not fooling anyone,” Sam had said at some point mid-February. At the time, Dean was failing in a particularly epic fashion to hide the longing in his face as he watched Rhonda's back (and yes, okay, alright, her ass) retreat across the motel parking lot following an afternoon spent watching all three of the original  _Star Wars_ films back-to-back.

“Whatever, Sammy. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You're _panting_ Dean. Visibly. I can see your pulse speed up when she's within a fifteen-foot radius. I'm surprised she still comes around, what with you wanting in her pants so obviously and all.”

Teenage Sammy could be a real jerk.

“Keep your nose the fuck out of my life, little bro.”

Then again, so could teenage Dean.

Despite the fact that he knew Sam had nailed it. Not that he _only_ wanted her for her ass (which had been the case with – let's face it – Evelyn and Jennifer and Hayley and Graham too if he was being perfectly honest). But he totally wanted her.

More every day.

And then, one Saturday in late May, a nasty band of thunderstorms had rolled into Springfield just as their shift ended at three, sending sheets of rain across the parking lot and making the visibility so bad that Rhonda pointed out it was stupid to drive. Even the two minutes up the highway to the hotel where Dean and Sam are staying. So they sat in her Honda Civic, listened to the _patter patter patter_ of the rain on the roof, and shifting slowly from “fellow workers” mode to “friendship” mode.

“Got any plans this evening?” Rhonda had asked, reaching around to swipe a chapstick from the pocket of her backpack which she'd dumped on the back seat.

“Nah,” Dean shrugged, “Sam's outta town on a school thing. Wanna hang out?” What he really wanted to ask was, “Wanna watch some _Earth 2_ while I give you a foot rub?” since they'd done that the last time he'd been over to her place and first of all _Clancy Brown_ and second of all _touching Rhonda_. Both of which he definitely wanted more of in his life. He'd especially enjoyed the way she'd giggled when he'd accidentally found a ticklish spot between her toes, and the way her whole body had relaxed when he'd found some magic acupressure point (she'd started to explain but he'd just tried it again and her eyes had lost focus) on the ball of her foot.

It was also hard to admit, even to himself, that there was something soothing about watching people battle evil _in space_ where he didn't have to think about how this, too, might turn out to be real in the here-and-now.

Not to mention families in which the mother wasn't dead and the father was easygoing and not too enthused about chain of command (not to mention those gorgeous hands and a smile that would light up a dozen suns) and the kids, despite said life-threatening evil, got to be kids.

But he'd never been very good at asking for what he really wanted, and would never have the time to learn how to ask for what he wanted with Rhonda. Hell, he’s only just beginning to learn how to ask _Cas_ , his own freakin’ angel of the goddamned lord, ten years and a whole lotta life after that day in the Honda Civic with Rhonda Hurley.

Nineteen-year-old Dean was at a complete loss when it came to arranging words to communicate complicated feelings along the lines of:

_\-- I really like how easy it is to be with you and I think I like rubbing your feet more than I liked the blow job Jennifer gave me six months ago especially since even though she offered she wouldn't talk to me after and I think I did something wrong but damned if I know what whereas you have this way of looking at me that says I'm doing it right for once, like maybe if I got naked in front of you it would feel safe not scary, like maybe you touching my dick would feel as good as when you lay your hand on the back of my neck (only we pretend it hasn't happened) only even more intense --_

So instead he said, “Wanna hang out?” And Rhonda'd grinned past the chapstick and said, “Sure. We can finish _Earth 2_ and order some pizza.” And he'd thought that perhaps he didn't need to put all of what he felt into so many words after all.

Looking back on that day, Dean could never explain to himself why it had been on _that_ day, as opposed to all the other days they'd spent together, that he and Rhonda had decided to acknowledge the undeniably sexual tension growing between them.

It might have had something to do with the fact that Gloria was with her mom and Sam was on a Science Olympics weekend at East Central.

It might have had something to do with the fact that Dean was starting to feel the itch at the top of his spine that meant John would be coming back soon rough for the wear and something riding his ass that meant (inevitably) that all three of them would be hauling rubber for an unknown destination, probably with pain and death for them or it at the other end.

It might have had something to do with the way, during the ten-minute drive from the Jiffy Lube to Rhonda's place they'd found themselves talking about parenting their parents. And when Rhonda had said, “Like, I know it's all they could do, and all, but I gotta say – their best was _so bad_ ” Dean had used it as an excuse to put a hand on her leg, maybe a little high up where the edge of her shorts disappeared between her thighs, and she'd shot him a look but hadn't asked him to move. Had, in fact, taken a hand off the wheel and slid her palm over his knuckles, 'til their fingers intertwined, and pressed him close, holding on, as her eyes went back to the road.

It probably had to do with the way that, after Rhonda pulled into her parking place, killed the wipers and turned off the car, Dean reached out to open the car door and she'd said, “Dean, I –” turning toward him, a hand on his arm, and they'd looked at each other. He'd become acutely aware of the angle of her body toward him, the way the seatbelt cut across her breasts, sat snugly against her hips, the lingering warmth of his hand where it had pressed against her skin, the vanilla scent of her chapstick that he suddenly imagined would taste like cookie dough on her lips.

And then another crack of thunder cut her off and she shook herself visibly and said, “c'mon, let's head inside,” leaving Dean feeling slightly keyed-up, on edge, and as if he'd let something _important_ slip by.

It most definitely had something to do with the way that, when they'd made their dash through the rain and tumbled down the flight of steps to Rhonda's basement apartment, she'd unlocked the front door and then turned and was suddenly _right there_ with the rain on her skin and clothes bringing out the scent of sweat and motor oil and vanilla and something fruity that was probably her shampoo in the air between them.

“Hey,” Rhonda’d murmured, a little breathless, her voice carrying with it the same mix of keyed-up tension and soft wonder Dean felt crawling under his skin. She stretched up from the step below him, and, leaning in, ghosted a kiss across his cheek -- close enough to his mouth for both of them to know it wasn’t accidental, far enough away to give them both plausible deniability if he didn’t want to take it further.

But, Dean realized, he did.

“Hey,” he’d murmured back, and turned into the kiss with a sigh.


	3. Chapter 3

**III.**

“Did I buy the wrong size?” Cas asks three days later, looking up with a gaze that manages to be both wholesomely appreciative and gratifyingly hungry as Dean shimmies out of his new jeans while they’re getting ready for bed.

Dean knows Cas isn't talking about the jeans which, true, are a little tight over his ass but he’d assumed Cas, who shows every evidence of liking Dean’s ass, had been purposeful about that too. He freezes.

“What?” Perhaps if he effects cluelessness --

“The underwear, Dean,” Cas says patiently, and Dean really ought to know better at this point, know he’s not going to derail any conversation Castiel has in mind to finish. “Did I get the wrong size? I kept the receipt as you instructed me to do, and we could go back and --”

Dean sighs. He was really hoping they wouldn’t have to have this conversation, at least not tonight, and ideally not ever. But this is _Cas_ so he’d known that was a futile hope.

He glances at the clock. Sam had headed out the door fifteen minutes ago for the 9:50pm showing of the latest _Underworld_ at the Cineplex up the road, making a point of informing them that the film was an hour and a half long and he'd probably be back around 11:30.

There are days when Dean admits his brother really does deserve to be thanked sincerely and often.

He'd been hoping he and Cas might use this time for something other than a heart-to-heart about panties. But the realistic part of his brain had seen that particular conversation headed toward him in every considering look Castiel had given Dean in the past three days.

He tosses his jeans into the empty chair next to the television and crawls onto the bed. Castiel is already curled up against the cheap hotel pillows reading the Book of Mormon that had been on offer in the bedside table (“I enjoy the melodrama,” he’d said, deadpan, the first time Dean had asked, “though the characterization of the native peoples of North America is historically inaccurate, and their cosmology is full of factual errors.”).

They’ve only been sharing a bed for non-sex purposes for about two months and already it feels -- familiar, comfortable.

Actually, it’s felt familiar and comfortable from the first night Cas fell asleep on Dean's chest and stayed there until the alarm on Dean’s cell phone went off the next morning. Something else that's too big, too beautiful, for Dean to look directly at – maybe it'll burn his eyes out, like an angel's grace – so he steals a glance out of the corner of his eye every so often and lets it be.

He’s slept better in Cas’s arms than he has since he literally rose from his own grave. With Cas wrapped around him, self-medication by way of cheap liquor seems less and less necessary.

And Sam hasn't asked so Dean hasn't said and the sex thing only happens when Sam is out of the room, so.

“I--” He stops. Tries again. “I just -- what made you buy those, dude?”

“You don’t like them?”

“No, it’s not --” He rubs his forehead against Cas’s shoulder in frustration. Why can Cas read his memories, but not his mind? He really doesn’t want to have to _talk_ about this. “I do -- I _do_ like them.”

“But you do not wear them.” Dean can feel the puzzlement radiating off Castiel, seeping into his pores. In Cas’s arms, he can almost convince himself it’s as straightforward as Cas makes it sound.

“I don’t wear them because they’re _women’s underwear_ Cas. Did you not notice that, when you were in the store? I would have thought the lace and the bras would have been a giveaway.”

He can feel Cas frowning down at him, but resists the urge to look up since eye contact would mean Cas will be more likely to correctly interpret the fear tight in his shoulders, curling deep in his belly.

“I am not that clueless Dean. I ascertained that the clothing in question was being sold primarily for people with female bodies. But there were other men shopping in that area of the store.”

“For their _girlfriends_ and _wives_ Cas.”

“You have no way of knowing who they were shopping for.”

“Yeah, Cas, I do. Guys who go in for that sort of kink don't usually shop at Kohl's.”

“Kink?”

“Kink – kinky? Cross-dressing? Remember that guy we ran into at the bar in Minneapolis back in January? Sequins? High heels? Padding?” He sketches curves down his torso, suggesting boobs and hips. She'd introduced herself as Esther, then later resurfaced as Eric. Had possessed a touch of psychic ability and a wife (Adele) who'd come through at the key moment with her black belt in Judo.

“I remember.” There's a pause. Then – God, he should have predicted this. “Where _should_ I have gone shopping, then?”

“No – _no_.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, willing himself not to lose it. _You're not nineteen. This isn't Dad. This is Cas._ “No. It's not – it's not like that. I'm not – I've never been into women's clothes, Cas.”

“Except for – 'panties'?” The angel tries out the word tentatively.

Dean rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, wondering where to start.

“She gave them to me.” He begins, more or less at random. Knowing Cas – observed? remembers? – this. He doesn’t have to start from the beginning. “Rhonda. She gave them to me. They reminded me of her – of – they felt good.” He draws a ragged breath.

He can do this.

Sam's spent their whole lives harassing Dean for not being emotionally capable, and John _demanded_ Dean be more or less emotionally incapable, so when it was the three of them Dean knew where he had to be, knew what he had to man up and do.

But John's not there any longer, and Sammy's his younger brother and he really shouldn't hold out out of spite, and Cas is – well, Cas and there's something about teaching Cas how to actually _talk_ to him and _explain_ things that's made Dean realize he's not bad at this, despite John's example. That, as a matter of fact, he can be _good_ at this, at reading people's body language, at anticipating what's going to scare or anger or hurt them. At knowing what's going to ease the pain, make them feel cared-for, healed, and whole.

Or as whole as any three people as broken as Sam, Dean, and Cas will ever be.

He doesn't _want_ to be afraid of this conversation. He's spent forty years in Hell, after all, and you'd think when you wake up drenched in sweat from flashbacks that involve disemboweling and genital torture and mindfuckery of the most skillful varieties having a conversation with your angelic boyfriend about your underwear preferences would fall into the “I have zero fucks to give” category of interpersonal communication.

But the thing is that this is _personal_. This is _private_.

“I never thanked you for picking them out, did I?” He peers out from under his forearm at Cas, who's watching him intently and who shakes his head solemnly in answer. “You were trying to get me something nice – a present – and I totally rained on your parade didn't I. Shit boyfriend that I am.”

“Dean, you're not--” Cas starts, but Dean holds up a hand.

“Nope, my turn. I'm working this out. I'm trying to explain why.” Cas closes his mouth and waits. He's good at that.

Dean rolls his head back under his arm. Somehow this is easier when he can't see Cas watching him.

“I was wearing them when we got bested by a Roc. I wasn’t watching my left flank and he got me good from here to here” -- Dean gestures a slanting line from mid-chest, about third rib down, across his left hip. He’d had a scar there until his matriculation to Hell. “Dad was in the room when the doctors cut everything off to get at the wound. I’ve been in shock enough times to tell the difference between shivering due to loss of blood and shivering ‘cause Dad’s got a thunderhead building.”

“I know, Dean. Your father was not the most – flexible – of thinkers.”

Dean huffs a laugh. “That's one way of putting it, yeah.”

There's silence in the room for a minute, then two.

“Dean.” Jesus, he can _feel_ Cas thinking. “Dean, I will not be disappointed or – angry – if you do not want my gift --”

“Oh, yeah. Like _that_ makes it better. Guilt on top of the shame.”

“But _why_ is there shame, Dean?”

Dean experiences the sensation of _deja vu_ – haven't they been here before? Has Gabriel decided to stop by and throw them all into a time-loop for kicks?

“It's not – I'm not – it's just _not okay_ , okay Cas? I can't – it's not something I can – afford to do. I don't make the rules. It just is. Guys like me, we aren't supposed to – we don't get to enjoy that kinda thing.”

“Why not, Dean?”

“Just – just _because_ , okay?”

“No. _Not_ okay.” Dean can hear the puzzled inquiry in Cas's voice sharpening, turning to anger and determination.

“Your father is not in a position to pass judgment any longer, Dean.”

“I wish.”

There's an earnest, puzzled silence. Dean peers out from under his forearm and sees the blank “I don't understand the human” look. He sighs.

“You know how – you know how _your_ father's been missing for awhile now, but you still feel like he's in the back of your head passing judgment on what you do?”

“He wouldn't care--”

“Yeah, I know. Grace, forgiveness, radical love, yadda yadda yadda. Well that's just great for you. But my dad _did_ , Cas. He really cared. You know all this. Did it just not register in your angelic brain at the time, what with you being focused on the war? He _freaked the fuck out_ and gave me the silent treatment for two weeks.”

It had not been a pleasant two weeks, and just saying the words is bringing back memories of how tense it had been. Aware every minute that he'd let his dad down – he wasn't quite sure how – somehow made them all _less safe_ (again, John was not forthcoming with the details). That every little thing that went wrong was _Dean's_ fault.

“Dean.” Cas puts a hand in the center of Dean's chest, startling him out of memory. “ _Dean_.”

“I – sorry, Cas, I – ” Dean blinks up into Cas' worried gaze, realizing for a minute there all he'd been seeing was the set of John's shoulders turned away from them in the hospital emergency room, where they'd cut away his clothes to get at a nasty gash across his chest and torso, a minute when all he'd been feeling was the shiver-shock of blood loss and the resigned exhaustion of knowing the last bit of connection he'd had to Rhonda had been stripped away by the medics with their surgical shears.

He shakes his head to clear it, then re-centers his attention on something he's certain of: the strength and gentleness of Cas's hand on his breastbone. He takes a breath, then another.

“Give us a kiss, yeah?” He whispers into the space between them. It's a request to let the conversation go, for now, and Dean can see the flash of frustration and stubbornness in Cas' eyes – the next question or observation forming on Cas' lips – before the angel deliberately sets the topic aside and, like Dean, refocuses on the moment at hand.

He lowers his head and licks a kiss against Dean's jaw, ghosting his lips up across Dean's end-of-the-day stubble to the fullness of Dean’s lower lip. Both of their mouths taste slightly of Colgate and the onion from the fajitas Dean had ordered at Applebee's and Cas had stolen from his plate. Dean draws in a deep breath and sighs into the touch, willing the muscles of his neck, chest, back, thighs, to relax.

 _Dad's not here._ He tells himself. _Sam's okay. We're not dead yet._ In the past few months, with the afterlife so nearly-fucking-nigh, it's becoming something of a private mantra.

“Dean.” Cas says against his lips, sliding his hand down Dean's sternum across his belly, down to cup the wiry hair and Dean's silk-soft cock which – having been on the retreat what with talk of painful memories – responds to the familiar touch with a shudder. Dean tenses his legs and pushes up into Cas' palm with a happy hum.

This is more like it.

He unclenches his hands (when had he fisted them?) and reaches up to push Cas's t-shirt up over the angel's ribs, feeling the dusting of hair across his chest, the nubs of Castiel's nipples under his thumbs as his hands span wide. Cas leans, heavy, into the touch, a growl deep in his throat, his fingers tightening around Dean.

Cas is the first lover Dean's had whose tells are so visceral, likes and dislikes etched into his skin with no pretense. It's fucking terrifying, Dean thinks, on the bad days: He's frightened for Castiel, the way the angel opens himself up like this, says _yes_ and _please, like that_ , and _more, Dean, yes_ as Dean mouths kisses against his belly, presses gentle fingers against the soft skin on the underside of Cas' dick, pulls the skin tight against Cas' balls, twines his fingers into Cas' hair and yanks – just a little rough.

The way Castiel arches, now, whenever Dean presses up behind him, close along his back, dick sliding between the curves of Cas' ass, pushes himself up into the bridge of Dean's hips, belly, ribcage, arms, like a cat purring into the caress of a hand, marking Dean skin-to-skin.

On the good days Dean can't remember how he lived without this, the intimacy of touch, how he ever felt whole before this angel, underneath him now, panting, whispering, scrabbling, moaning, _Dean, Dean, thereDean, nowDean, please, please don't stop don't ever stop_ gathered him from dust and pulled the breath from his lungs and danced fire across the atoms of his skin.

The scar on his shoulder burns hot whenever Cas comes, both pain and pleasure, the truth of _life_ and _love_ and the wild edges of the universe.

Sometimes, Dean thinks he smells ozone tangled with the scent of sweat and sex.

Tonight Cas holds him close, reeling him in from _then_ to _now_ , telling him with teeth and tongue, gentle hands and sharp fingernails, that everything Dean is and was and will be is known, and loved.

Maybe, Dean thinks – in a moment of clarity as Cas draws an orgasm out of him with relentless, steady hands – maybe he's finally man enough to wear whatever he damn well pleases.

Afterwards, Cas wants ice cream so Dean pulls on his sweats and runs down to the Dairy Queen for a blizzard, which they eat with a shared spoon. Sam blows in out of the rain about five minutes after they finish the ice cream and assiduously ignores the obvious fact that sex has recently been had _right there_.

Dean silently congratulates his little bro on the poker face and considers suggesting they spring for two hotel rooms from here on out.


	4. Chapter 4

**IV.**

Nineteen-year-old Dean hadn't been to Hell and back, had no idea he'd been assigned a guardian angel (didn't, in fact, believe angels existed: youthful misconception number thirty-eight), and could not yet imagine a world in which when his father said “jump” he didn't automatically respond with “how high?” or even simply “yes sir!”

But his nineteen-year-old self knew an awful lot about the thirst to feel _wanted_ as well as _needed_ , the hunger for love that wasn't complicated by his father's need for control coupled with John’s habit of vanishing into thin air just when the boys needed him -- not to save them from the latest threat but just to be, well, _Dad_.

There, in the half-open door of Rhonda's studio apartment, he slides his free arm around her waist, pulling her close, taking the measure of her with his open palms. She shivers slightly as he slides his rain-damp hands up under her shirt, fingers curving around her ribs, tracing the slight dip of flesh at her spine, the dimple right below the waistband of her jeans, where the crease of her ass begins.

“Dean?” It's voiced as a question, but she's already shuffling backwards, her thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans,drawing him in, in against the warm solid line of her body, _Christ so good_ , angling her leg so that it presses in between his own thighs ever so slightly, giving him something solid to grind against, which he does, once, twice, before he's even realized he's doing so.

He's never been so unselfconscious about this before, always gone into sex with the same wired feeling he gets on a hunt. That he could move like that,  _ache_ with the touch, almost without thought is -- “God, Rhonda, I'm sorry, I--”

But she's laughing, smiling against his skin, holding him, firm hands on his hips, not letting him retreat, “No, no, Dean it's – please, don't – I _want_ you here, want this, want -- with you.”

She's maneuvered them with a shuffling two-step off the stairs and through the door, is fumbling with the lights and shrugging out of her jacket, helping him off with his. Despite his half-hearted retreat, he doesn’t _really_ want to let go, to lose contact, and she doesn't seem to want him to stop touching, so he goes with it. Usually by this point -- whether with a guy or a girl -- he's fighting down the urge to cut and run, to point out it's all been a giant mistake. That actually, neither of them really want it, not the way he wants them to want it, anyway. But as Dean tenses for the inevitable freakout he realizes it's not happening, not this time.

That instead of _stop_ and _run_ , what his body is telling him is _more_ and _yes exactly_ and _what the hell took you so long_ \-- that's got to be a good sign, right?

And apparently Rhonda's having no second thoughts either because she's got his hands and she's pulling him across the well-worn carpet toward the painted screens that cordons off her sleeping alcove from the rest of the apartment. She's protective of the space, and he realizes as she pulls him around the batik panels that this is the first time he's set foot behind them, despite the hours he's spent here, eating, talking, hanging out.

This is different. This is new.

It's quiet back here, he realizes, on the side of the apartment building sheltered from the street. There's a futon mattress on the floor, duvet thrown back, a haphazard pile of books and a mug of over-steeped tea near the end with the pillows. She's tacked a string of Christmas lights up -- holding them in place with a series of thumbtacks pushed into cheap plaster. Apple crates filled with secondhand paperbacks serve as ersatz bookshelves; unlit candles are scattered across their tops, sitting in a motley collection of shallow bowls, the kind you can haunt Goodwill and pick up for fifty cents a pop.

He takes all this in with his peripheral vision, trained into hyper-awareness from his years on the hunt, while also aware of the guiding heat of Rhonda's hands on his waist, the way her mouth is working kisses along his jaw and – is she _sucking on his earlobe_? He yelps a little, startled, but it feels kinda good so before she can pull away to apologize he turns the yelp into a sound of approval against the hollow of her throat.

She laughs, delighted. Another vocalization that hasn't featured a lot in the sex life of Dean Winchester, heretofore.

He licks her collarbone, gets another breathless half-gasp, half-laugh. Feels her pulse flickering against his lips.

“I want--” she manages, between increasingly-urgent kisses, “I want--” and this is actually a first for Dean, whose high school conquests had been short on articulate desire. His back catalog mostly consists of non-verbal fumblings in make-shift private spaces, always an ear or an eye out for someone's parents or boss, teacher or fellow student to round the corner.

He’s always yearned to make it good, but hasn't had much sense of _how_. The guys he’s been with haven’t seemed to care; the girls he's gotten this far with seem to expect him to take the driver's seat, as if he’ll just to _know_ , but how's he supposed to know about this shit any more than they do?

He knows a dozen ways to kill a vamp, and how to make their rooms safe enough so he and Sam can sleep at night.

He knows how to clean, and use with deadly accuracy, every weapon in his father’s not-inconsiderable arsenal.

And he's known how to wank since before he can really remember. But when it comes to putting what he knows about _himself_ together with another person? Let's just say the fumblings of his adolescent years have been both inexpert and unsatisfying -- though at least always mutual.

Maybe this can be something -- _more_ \-- though fuck if he knows how to ask for what he wants.

“It's good, you're good, whatever you want, I can –” he starts to say, and then another rumble of thunder rolls out overhead and the lights flicker, then die.

There's half a beat of silence and then Rhonda drops her forehead to his shoulder with an exhaled “ _Damn_.”

Then – “Hold on – let me –” and Dean's left standing awkwardly next to her futon while she locates the matches and goes around lighting all the half-burned candles.

Dean has little experience of candlelight outside of wards or exorcisms or sanctified spaces, and he has a flash of realization watching Rhonda touch her match to the last two wicks that for her the candles are probably analogous to the loops of Christmas lights dancing their way across the walls. She hasn't chosen them for their protective properties, hasn't placed them in a particular pattern, doesn’t light them now with Latin incantations on her lips.

It's --  _restful_. He has a sudden full-body, white-hot spike of yearning for a life where things like candles can _just be candles_ rather than preparation for violence or a ward against evil.

Candles lit, Rhonda turns back to him. The space between them feels awkward, and for a heartbeat or two insurmountable. Dean licks his lips, not sure what he's going to say but sure he ought to say _something_.

“Rhonda, I --”

“Dean, do you --”

They both start, then stop, wait for the other person. Dean shoves his hands into his pants pockets, shifts his weight, conscious of the way his dick is undeniably interested in continuing what they've started. He's used that, once or twice, to push for further action and it's never made him feel very proud of himself – and in fact never led to much of a good time either. So he tries his best to assume an attitude of nonchalance and hope for –

– Rhonda's in his personal space, again, like she'd been in the stairwell. “Dean, I _want_ this. With you,” she's saying, again, "I want to get naked, with you, and touch your dick and feel your fingers slide inside me. I've been wanting this, wanting you, for a while now. And I think you've been wanting me too." She's talking a little fast, a little breathless, but her eyes are clear in the flickering candlelight and her gaze holds his, not the least bit evasive or ashamed. Her hands are running down his chest, palms closing in, passing around his wrists, then flexing open again to reach around and cup his ass, pull him flush against her belly so that the unyielding curve of her pelvis presses in against the pounding pulse at his groin.

Dean lets her take the lead, sinks into the welcoming, greedy touch, feels with fragile awe the soft rise of her breasts, the hard pebbled nubs of her nipples even through the triple-layer of cloth (shirt, shirt, bra) between them. _This is real. Rhonda really wants him. Dean. Like this. Right now._ She digs her fingers into the muscle of his hips hard, hard enough he thinks, he knows he'll bruise, buries her nose into the hollow of his neck, whispers “ _Please--_ ”


	5. Chapter 5

**V.**

The power is restored about three hours later, the low  _humm_ of the old refrigerator rousing Dean from the pleasant not-quite-wakefulness he’s been floating in, Rhonda naked in his arms and the soft _patapatapatapat_  of rain in the window wells a sweet, post-coital lullaby.

His shoulder, the one that’s been injured one time too many, always a little stiff, is torqued at just the wrong side of comfortable and as he shifts to re-align it Rhonda heaves a waking breath and stretches against him, hand sliding up to finger the jagged scar along his right collarbone.

“Hey,” she murmurs, sleepily.

“Hey,” he whispers back, brushing a kiss against her forehead, watching one of the candles under the window as it gutters and flares its last.

Almost simultaneously, their stomachs gurgle; Dean snorts and Rhonda’s mouth quirks in a smile against his skin. “Guess it’s dinnertime,” she observes, patting his belly, sleep still clouding her voice. They haven’t eaten since their midshift break: an eon ago in the history of this day. “Yeah, sorry.” He’s not sure why he’s apologizing, except he doesn’t want to break the spell: him, Rhonda, the flickering candles, the silence, the rain.

Rhonda rolls out of bed saying, “I’ll phone for a pizza, yeah?” and without asking picks up the nearest piece of clothing on the floor, which just happens to be Dean’s discarded boxers, and steps into them, casually, on her way to the kitchen for the cordless phone and the take-out menu pinned to the corkboard by the answering machine.

“Hawaiian okay? Or you want something else?” She reappears around the screen, leaning up against the wall, menu in one hand, phone in the other. And there’s something about the way she stands there utterly unselfconscious, a scattering of dark hair across her belly, her torso still unclothed and her breasts just _there_ : not on display for Dean, necessarily, but with the bloom of a hickey coming out on her left collarbone, and bite marks on her right breast where -- he blushes, remembering -- he’d gotten a little carried away. He feels the ghost of her skin against his lips and teeth, the way she’d arched into his mouth, urging him _yeah like that oh god, please baby, yes, Dean, oh_ \-- he has to close his eyes against the vision of her stretching across the mattress, the sensaround memory of her fever-hot hands on his face, neck, shoulders, the vibrations of her full-body moans as she'd leaned, pushy, into his mouth.

“Dean?” She waves the menu, “Input? Got any?”

He licks his lips, mouth dry once again with desire, and manages: “Hawaiian, yeah, whatever. Maybe some cheese fries? I got a twenty in my wallet.”

“Sure thing.” She punches in the buttons and tucks the phone to her ear, eyes on the menu.

He _wants_ , he realizes in that moment. Wants something he can’t quite name, or put his hands on. Something in the confidence of her hips, in the way she inhabits her body. The desire ripples across his skin, prickling and hot, an echo of the way she moved with him across the rumpled sheets, needy, desiring, hands and tongue on every inch of his skin. The way she'd shifted under his fingers and mouth, canted her hips until his tongue was just _so_.

The way she’d come with laughter on her lips.

“You look good in those.” He says, trying not to sound like his voice is cracking with uncontainable emotion. Trying to sound all cool, _suave_ , like he’s been with other women this way, had it mean this much, like this wasn’t the first time he’d ever actually tasted -- been _allowed_ to taste -- put his tongue to a girl’s clit, feel it pulse against his lips, so fucking _tiny_ and so _present_ at the same time.

She grins at him, mischievous, and tosses the phone onto the chair in the corner. “Yeah?” She sashays a few feet into the room and turns full-circle for him, like she’s modeling, half mocking, half proud, a thread of vulnerability tracing through the shadows in her eyes. He puts out a hand in an arrested gesture of comfort -- _fuck, Rhonda, you have no idea how sexy you --_

“I bet you’d look as good in mine.” She bends over and plucks her discarded panties off the floor, tosses them across to Dean. He catches them reflexively. They’re pale pink, cheap satin, with elastic around the waistband slightly frayed from laundromat washings. The lining inside is still slightly damp from arousal, and he feels something small and shivery run up his arms at that, at the thought of slipping the scent of her up over his legs, to nestle against his dick.

“I--” he reflexively starts to reject the notion because, hello: _pink satin panties_? There's even a little bow sewn on over the left hip. _Ew_. But then thinks about the feel of the cool satin against his fingers, about the privacy of this space, about the girl (woman?) who's standing at the foot of the bed in just his boxers, whose hands probably still smell (and taste) of him – and he realizes he'd like nothing better than to keep wearing _her_ and if not her, then maybe something that's touched, held, been warmed by her.

“Yeah – okay,” he whispers, and pulls up his knees so he can slip the scrap of fabric over his shins.

She's watching him in the warm glow from the string of Christmas lights and flickering candles, lips slightly parted, eyes laughing – but not in a way that makes him feel like the butt of a joke. In a way that makes him feel like right in this moment she's more pleased with him than with anything or anyone else in the world.

There's no suave way to do this, he decides, at least not without practice (and putting _on_ clothes is not something Dean has ever attempted to do in a sexual, flirtatious manner). So he cants his hips and yanks the panties on, trying to go for casual.

Not a _bad_ fit, although he can tell as he wriggles slightly to get them settled that they bag ever-so-slightly in the ass, and the crotch isn't quite roomy enough, all things considered. He's not a briefs kinda guy, has always preferred the boxers. In part because they can double as sleeping shorts and when you're living out of the trunk of a car most of your life, pieces of clothing that do double-duty have major appeal.

So: made for girls, definitely. But – this is where his heart starts to stutter in his chest and he turns his head, suddenly uncomfortable with Rhonda's gaze – they fit badly _in a good way_. Meaning, the places where they pull or sag, the elastic of the waistband and the slide of the satin feel _alien_ and therefore part of a world that he'd thought (at least up until two hours ago) would never be his but which now he's starting to imagine might, somehow, someday, be _home_. A playful, thoughtful, comfortable space, where kisses blend with touch blend with laughter and time slows down and you forget, maybe, how precarious home can be.

“You should keep 'em,” Rhonda says, sinking down onto the mattress beside him, slapping her hand down lightly against the curve of his hip and ass, leaving it there warm and familiar. As if she's been touching his ass like this every evening for three months instead of three hours.

“Go get 'em soldier.”

He grins, and kisses her back, warm and easy, slides his hand up the backs of her thighs, underneath his boxers, urges her up and over to settle back in his lap, fold herself in against his chest, tuck her face in against the hollow of his neck, where she nuzzles in with a contented sigh while they wait for the pizza to arrive.

He could get used to this, if he let himself.

It's a terrifying thought.


	6. Chapter 6

**VI.**

It takes Dean almost a month after the selkie incident before he screws up the courage to try on the black satin panties, and even then it's strictly in private.

They've washed up at Bobby's on the way to Moscow, Idaho, on the trail of a pack of weres. Bobby, Sam, and Cas have retreated post-dinner to Bobby's library to engage in what Dean's come to think of as their ritual mutual info dump.

He knows himself well enough to realize that after ten hours on the road he won't have the stamina to listen to their back-and-forth without giving in to the urge to break something. So he quietly retreats to the bedroom that used to be his and has, without comment, become his and Castiel's.

He's digging through their bags for a clean t-shirt to wear to bed when his hand brushes against the crumpled knickers, which he'd tucked in an inside pocket the night Cas bought them and proceeded to assiduously ignored them for the twenty-seven nights after.

He's alone now, here on the second floor. Knows the others will be busy talking for at least an hour, probably more.

He pulls the panties out and lets himself down on the edge of the bed, fingering the cloth, thinking about how it used to feel to set out on a hunt with the slide of Rhonda's pink panties between him and the well-worn denim of his jeans.

Two days after Rhonda had sent Dean home in her panties with a kiss tongued across his lips and a possessive caress of his ass (he could _feel_ her fingering the pink satin through he cargo pants), John had shown up with a demon riding herd and three hours later Dean, Sam, and John were packed and gone.

Dean had never had the heart to call.

(What would he say: “I felt more myself with you than I've felt with anyone, in maybe forever, but -- the Hellmouth? It's real. And my Dad's got a date with a demon three states over so -- I just can't. Right now.” No way that conversation would go well.)

Three weeks later, he'd convinced himself Rhonda was too good for him, and probably hated him now, anyway, so what was the use of wishing it could be different.

(That was about the time he wore the shell-pink panties for a week straight, washing them in the shower every morning and wearing them damply against his skin where they took half a day to dry. John was after a gnarl of Redcaps and Dean was betting the three of them had maybe even-odds; the secret of Rhonda held close against his skin helped keep his head halfway clear, suggesting emotions other than _terror_ and physical sensations other than _pain_.)

Three months after that  he'd bought a postcard in a gas station outside of Gary, Indiana, and after holding onto it for five weeks had finally written, in cramped, belabored script on the back:

> I'm sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye. Dad came back and we had to get out of town. Long story. I miss you. I wish I could see you again, but I don't think we'll be back. I'm sorry. Tell Gloria hello for me. Thanks for being a friend. Dean.

At nineteen how do you say, “I'm know I'm fucked up but I wish I could believe you'd give me a chance” and “The sex we had made me understand why people call it 'making love' and that makes me feel like such a girl and scared as hell” let alone “I wear your panties almost every day despite the fact I know my Dad would go apeshit if he found them, because they help me feel safe – and like I'm something more than just the hunter my dad's trained me to be”?

The day after he'd torn the postcard up and flushed it down the hotel toilet, Dean had run afoul of a Roc with anger issues and gotten clawed across the chest and shoulder, dangerously close to a major artery. John had gotten him to the nearest hospital where the EMTs wasted no time in taking a big pair of shears and cutting the clothes off his body, ankle to collarbone, while he shivered uncontrollably in shock.

Even if he'd been aware enough, at that point, to remember why he'd wanted to keep the panties secret, which he hadn't been, there wasn't a single damn thing he could have done about it. Before he could formulate the words _please don't ruin--_ and _those are important to me, please--_ the _snick snack_ of the scissors had done their work and scraps of pink had joined the ruin of his favorite Clash t-shirt and yet another pair of jeans.

That was the point at which John simply ceased speaking to him.

And didn't start up again until over two weeks later.

Neither Dean nor his father had mentioned the incident again.

But Cas bought him the panties, a gift, and Sam isn't gonna give a damn what his brother wears, or why. Not that Sam has a lot of room to point fingers (see: demon blood, also: poor choice in girlfriends). But the point is that Dean is pretty sure that even without the whole back-from-the-dead, we're-all-incredibly-fucked situation they've got going Sammy's a good kid and Dean is family and it'd take a helluva lot more than a pair of women's panties to drive a wedge between them again.

He goes down the hall to the bathroom to brush his teeth, then comes back and shucks off his travel-worn tee, jeans and boxers. Before he can think about it enough to psych himself out, he plucks the black satin up from the bed and steps into the panties, pulling the material up over his legs, settling it across his ass.

It feels – like he remembered. The satin slightly cool. Pulling tight in odd places, slightly baggy in others. This pair fits better than Rhonda's did. Let's face it, Dean's belly and ass have filled out since his weedy teens. And Castiel – with his creepy angelic knowledge of Dean's every curve and crevice – seems to have chosen well. The crotch needs a little adjustment to cradle him comfortably, but once he's wriggled a bit to get everything into alignment, they're – comfortable.

Startlingly familiar.

He stands there for a moment, waiting for his adrenaline to spike, but it doesn't happen. Instead, he thinks about Cas standing in the Kohl's frowning intently at the bins of panties, rifling through looking for whatever he'd had in mind. The panties Dean's wearing right now aren't the same cut or color as the pair that had inspired them, so obviously Cas had chosen them with his own taste – or what he imagined was Dean's – in mind.

“Go get 'em soldier,” Dean whispers to himself. It's one of the things his dad used to say, but after that day with Rhonda he always heard it in her voice, felt the echo of her scent against his skin.

He slides into bed and slings the covers across his hips, planning to doze until Cas remembers he needs to sleep these days and makes his way to bed.


	7. Chapter 7

**VII.**

It's past midnight when Castiel wakes Dean from his restless half-sleep, sliding under the covers and spooning up behind Dean with a whispery _humm_ of contentment. Dean murmurs appreciatively at the warmth, settling back against the solid protection of Cas' chest, hips, thighs.

It's gotten to the point where he doesn't ever quite fall asleep until Cas is there with him, and he wonders sometimes how he'd ever slept before Cas. Maybe he hadn't. That could explain a lot.

“You guys good--?” He asks, or tries to ask. He's aware it probably comes out more like, “Gnh hmph?”

Luckily, Cas understands the question.

“Bobby has found me a few new archival sources that may be worth looking into,” Cas reports, sounding distracted. Dean wakes up enough to realize that Cas's right hand has skimmed down Dean's ribs and come to rest on the smooth waistband of the panties.

Dean considers saying something, but his brain isn't awake enough to remember what Cas might expect him to offer at this point, so he opts for sleepy silence.

Cas slides his palm against the fabric, slips a hand down between his own nakedness (they've discovered human Cas runs hot) and Dean's ass, cupping Dean's behind in a palm that warms the satin immediately, fingers splayed as if he's taking his measure of Dean.

He completes the motion, sliding his hand down the back of Dean's thigh and then up the front, coming to rest without demand over Dean's cock tucked in against his body. It's a possessive, protective gesture, and something Dean thinks only Cas might be capable of: ownership without expectation, the confidence that Dean is his in a way that doesn't – any longer, at least – make Dean automatically panic and want to damage something or someone (preferably Cas).

Cas without the archangels twisting his arm, Dean's realized in the past year, is a Cas who wants Dean just  _because_  – not as a soldier, not as a vessel, not as some badass savior of humankind, but because Dean is  _his_.

Dean's tried, sometimes -- with Cas naked under him, or while they're waiting for the Impala's tank to fill, or for Sam to get back with the requisite round of coffee and donuts -- to get Cas to elaborate on his love: “No, really. Why do you want me man? I'm really nothing special. You know that. Better than anyone.”

Cas just looks blankly at him. When pressed he'll say something like, “You're mine, Dean.” Or, “You are full worthy to be loved.” Or, “I cannot remember a time when I did not feel this way about you, Dean. It is like that tree or the sky or the dust under our feet. Eternal, even in death.”

Cas doesn't say anything about the panties, but Dean starts talking anyway. He's too sleepy to worry about what to say or not to say and the first thing out of his mouth is: “I never had a chance to tell her how good she tasted.”

It wasn't exactly how he'd anticipated starting this conversation, but it seems as good a place as any.

“No.” Castiel agrees, softly. Of course he would know.

Dean rolls onto his back, Cas shifting to accommodate Dean’s movement while still remaining in bodily contact, a comforting line of heat down Dean's right side, hand still cupping Dean’s dick. As they move, Dean feels Cas's own cock brush soft against the back of his wrist, reflexively slides his own hand in against Cas's leg, thumb brushing the crevice where thigh and hipbone meet.

They lay there in the dark for a heartbeat or two.

“I know it's stupid,” Dean tries again. “I know I was only nineteen and -- fuck, what was I going to do? Leave Sammy to deal with Dad all by himself? Enroll in community college some place? I'd have gone stir-crazy in a matter of months. She was talking about signing up for the Peace Corps 'n shit. She probably doesn't even remember –”

“She remembers you, Dean.” Castiel says quietly. Dean pauses. He hasn't thought in quite this way about the fact that Cas, with his angel mojo, might know more about Dean’s past relationships than Dean himself has ever been able to sort out.

There are things he'd really rather not know about the past, thank you very much. And yet – “yeah?” he hears himself asking, tentatively.

Cas slides he hand from Dean's groin up across his belly, smoothing across Dean's chest, fingers idly tracing against Dean's nipples, half tickle, half caress.

There's a thoughtful silence, as if Cas is collecting his thoughts.

“She kept your boxers and wore them to sleep in until the cotton became so thin it ripped from the waistband,” he begins. “She suspected what had happened, that your father had taken you away, and worried about you. Was sometimes angry. Sometimes sad. She hopes you are having a good life.”

Which, okay. Dean thinks for a minute, running his left hand across the fine hairs on Cas' forearm where it lays across his chest.

“I am. _Am_ having a good life,” he whispers into the dark, realizing it's true. It is what it is, but he's got Sammy and Cas and Bobby and Ellen and Jo and they might be riding toward the end of the world and all, but they're in it together, and here he is lying in bed with his boyfriend whose hand is currently wandering back down toward the waistband of a pair of black satin panties, fingers slipping beneath the cloth to – he hears himself make a little moan of contentment as Cas slides fingers down along the length of his dick.

Again: exploratory, undemanding.

“Is -- is she -- ?”

He doesn't want details, really. Just -- reassurances. Though they're more than he deserves, a balm for the failings of his younger self, in what had -- quite literally -- been another lifetime. “No, sorry man, that's -- I shouldn't ask. Not my place to know.”

“She is living in something called an 'eco-village' in the Ozarks with her wife,” Cas says and, okay, totally wasn't expecting that, but -- then again, he wasn't expecting himself and Cas either, so -- “I believe she is responsible for the farm machinery.” That sounds like Rhonda.

Cas' ring finger is now teasing the underside of his cock in a slightly more intentional way, putting firm-but-not-painful pressure on his balls, like he wants Dean to remember he's there.

Dean supposes he can't blame the guy -- they are, after all, talking about Dean's ex. He realizes they haven't talked much about what, if any, relationships Cas had pre-Dean. To be fair, Cas doesn't seem to think there was much in his life aside from Dean (Dean, and war, which is the saddest example of work-life balance Dean has ever seen).

“You do not have to be ashamed of your conduct with Rhonda Hurley, Dean,” Cas is saying, while (sneaky bastard) increasing the pressure of his fingers on and around Dean's dick. Dean can feel his pulse speeding up, the last vestiges of drowsyness evaporating as his body reorients itself toward Cas, toward their places of joining. He can feel Cas growing heavier against his hand.

“I'm -- not. Not really,” Dean manages to gasp into Cas' shoulder as he rolls toward the angel needing _closer_ and _more_. “I just -- we never had a goddamned chance. And -- it's not that -- I wouldn't want her back, I just –”

“You're  _allowed to mourn_ , Dean,” Cas whispers fiercely against his cheek, even as he's taking charge, lifting Dean's hips and sliding the black satin back down Dean's legs, straddling Dean's thigh and settling himself hot and hard against Dean's belly, pressing them both together as he bends down to tongue Dean's mouth open, to suck bruises against his collarbone, to nip near-painful kisses into the dusky rose of Dean's nipples and press the words into Dean's flesh.

“You're  _mine_  Dean. You've  _always_  been mine. Rhonda is, and was, a righteous, generous, open soul. What you had together was beautiful, and _good_ \-- and I want it to be, am  _glad_  it is, a part of you. Dean, look at me. Dean.”

Dean isn't really paying attention to the words any longer as Cas is rocking steadily against him with a rhythm that manages to be both soothing and distracting simultaneously. He wants, he wants – he keeps trying to reach between them, to push the intensity over the edge, but Cas has his wrists, is holding him safe, grounding him,  _Cas Cas Cas_  he realizes he's whining, hitching his hips against the press of Cas bearing down above him, pushing his ass against the solid weight of Cas' thigh between his legs --

“Dean.” Dean opens his eyes and look up to where Cas' eyes glint in the faint moonlight filtering in through the window.

 _What?_ He tries to say, though what he really means is _fuck me_ , lifting himself up off the mattress, feeling the grip of Cas' hands on his wrists, the slide of Cas' cock against his own.

“Dean. You don't have to run anymore from these memories.”

“ _Please_ ,” Dean whispers into the dark. “I want--”

“I know.” Cas reaches between them and wraps his hand around Dean, swift and sure, and draws the orgasm out of Dean with a focused intensity that Dean knows is just a dim echo of the power of attention Cas used to pull him out of Hell.

The scar on Dean’s shoulder burns with memories he can't possibly run from: they're etched into his very being.

Against the backdrop of Dean's heavy, post-coital breathing, Cas whispers -- half to himself -- “Why should I be angry for what you had with her, who saw you as you truly are, when I was too young and too stupid to know how to be here for you? To know how I wanted you?”

“I --” Dean isn't sure how to answer that. He's not even sure at this point he can process what Cas is saying. So he settles for, “Cas, you're here for me now, and please could you -- _please_ let me touch you?”

Which must be okay, must be the right answer, because Cas lets go of Dean's other wrist and Dean can finally, finally, reach up and get his hands and mouth on Cas, pushing himself up into a sitting position and pulling the angel all the way into his lap. He can feel his arms and legs trembling slightly, the slightly shocky feeling of having all the want and need met and matched and drained away.

He remembers the first time he felt this with Cas, how terrifying it had been, how Cas had pressed himself against Dean's side, slick with sweat and come, how he'd whispered love in a dozen different languages against Dean's ear, pulling Dean back to earth with touch and taste and sound.

“Cas, Cas,” he's gentling now into the angel's neck as Cas wraps his legs around Dean's hips, he arms around Dean's back, one of his favorite positions for this and Dean doesn't know, hasn't asked, will ask someday why – but he thinks he might already have the answer in the way Cas presses, rocks, _kneads_ , himself closer, hands everywhere, smoothing, moulding, clutching, checking.

Cas needs to make sure Dean is still properly _whole_.

Dean reaches down between them, puts his hand against the curve of Cas' dick – feels the spent heat of his own, the way -- even post-orgasm -- his body responds to his grip around Cas; _Christ_ he'll never get used to that, to the way they're so attuned to each other at this point in the game that he's nearly beyond knowing who's touching whom, the feedback loop that means when he touches Cas, he moans into the movement, feels his cock flutter against his arm, like it's _Cas_ touching _him_.

They're rocking gently together, Cas breathing words into his shoulder that make his scar tingle -- words Dean doesn't, strictly speaking, understand, but which he suspects would translate into concepts like _soul_ and _rise_ and _repair_ and _from dust you shall return_. Like _breathe_ and _be_ and _know and be known_.

He can feel Cas is close, turns his head to whisper, “I gotcha, Cas, I gotcha, I'm right here, you can come for me, I know you can,” 'cause he's learned Cas needs that, needs to know he's there, know he's whole, know they're right there together, before he can let himself lose track of the boundaries of his human body for even a fraction of eternity.

And Cas arches up with a gasp above him, fingernails digging painfully into Dean's shoulders, and comes with a full-body shudder and spurt of wet heat against Dean's chest.

“It's okay babe, I gotcha, I gotcha,” Dean's hands are gathering Cas in, bringing him down, folding him in against the pillows. He’s fumbling with his discarded t-shirt, mopping them up, then tucking them in to sleep.

“You can -- s’okay -- want you to,” Cas mutters into Dean’s shoulder as Dean settles in on his side of the bed, Cas slotting in beside him, flinging leg and arm across Dean’s still-overheated skin.

“Sure, buddy,” Dean ruffles his angel’s hair, tries to reconcile Cas-the-cuddle-junkie with Castiel, angel of the Lord, whose orgasms hasten the melting of polar ice caps.

“It’s righteous to honor her memory, Dean,” Cas murmurs against his skin. And Dean realizes they’re back to Rhonda and her panties and the way she’d given Dean, however briefly, the chance to _be_ and to _know_ and maybe even _be known_.

How she was the first person who'd shown him he _wanted_ that chance.

And he'd never even had the opportunity to thank her, to show her the person she’d helped create.

He'd never had the chance to get used to being desired, with Rhonda.

But he might just get the chance with Cas.


	8. Chapter 8

**CODA**

At the breakfast table the following morning, Cas -- in what might be considered a subtle move where angels are concerned -- slides a hand between the back of Dean's chair and the small of Dean's back, dips his fingers gently and firmly down beneath Dean’s waistband, tracing the edge of black satin he finds there.

“ ‘Comfy’?” He leans over to whisper in Dean’s ear, lips close and warm, full of promises.

Dean smiles at the way Cas manages to make the word seem bracketed by quotation marks, and feels something uncurl inside himself at the touch.

He leans over and lets his forehead bump gently against Cas's temple.

“Yeah. Yeah, Cas, I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ~~Matchbox 20's~~ Deep Blue Something's “[Breakfast at Tiffany's](http://www.lyricsfreak.com/m/matchbox+twenty/breakfast+at+tiffanys_20806533.html)” because my brother once made a mix tape (Yes! An actual mix tape!) with the song on it, which is why it was the lyric I heard when Dean reminded future!Dean about the panty incident.
> 
> All eight chapters are now live! And I'll be posting a second little one-off this weekend, in which Cas and Sam spend time pairing socks and Sam has an existential crisis. So if you've enjoyed this so far, stay tuned!


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